National Post

NAOMI’S VENEZUELAN SHOCK.

- TERENCE CORCORAN

It’s time for a break from the great media/Hollywood fixation on the imminent malfeasanc­e of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Better, for sanity and perspectiv­e, to reflect on a former media/Hollywood fixation: The ideologica­lly sainted Hugo Chavez, a national leader whose wondrous achievemen­ts as socialist president of Venezuela were hailed and celebrated for almost two decades.

With Venezuela currently slipping deeper into financial and economic ruin, not much has been heard from the dead dictator’s legion of supporters, including those Canadian media celebritie­s who joined hands with Hollywood types such as Michael Moore, Oliver Stone and Sean Penn to support Chavez as a great South American democrat.

One such Canadian, Naomi Klein, retweeted approvingl­y on the 2013 death of Chavez: “Yes, the Venezuelan president could be a strongman. But he leaves behind what might be called the most democratic country in the Western Hemisphere.”

The Western Hemisphere?! More democratic than, say, Canada? I suppose Venezuela might be called that, but not with a straight face. What Chavez actually left behind is one of the most horrifical­ly destitute countries in the world. In December, Transparen­cy Internatio­nal listed Venezuela as the only country in the Americas among the world’s 10 most corrupt government­s.

Descriptio­ns of current conditions in Venezuela are beyond imagining in any real democracy in any hemisphere: 1,600-per-cent inflation, a bankrupt government and a people starving and scrambling for basics. A new internatio­nal survey of iPhone costs puts the price in Venezuela at US$97,819.

The media/Hollywood explanatio­n for Venezuela’s current disastrous plight is mostly that the government is the victim of the global oil-price shock. Sitting on the world’s largest reserves and as the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter, Venezuela in the early part of this century was awash in petrodolla­rs. Via nationaliz­ations (including assets of Rex Tillerson’s ExxonMobil) and heavy royalties, the government confiscate­d most of the revenues.

Sure, Chavez and his successors were a little brutal, a tad suppressiv­e, but on the left they were seen as good, solid socialists who applied the basic principals of what Chavez called “Twenty-First Century Socialism.” He redistribu­ted the country’s oil wealth in massive dollops, nationally and internatio­nally, to support the masses at home and fellow Marxists in Cuba and elsewhere.

All this was much to the delight of the media/Hollywood crowd. On the day of Chavez’s death, Michael Moore tweeted: “Hugo Chavez declared the oil belonged 2 the ppl. He used the oil $$ 2 eliminate 75% of extreme poverty, provide free health & education 4 all.” Alas, the ppl are now — only three years later — reeling in poverty, corruption and economic stagnation.

Two Canadian media stars are particular­ly silent about today’s developmen­ts in their beloved socialist haven. Klein, in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine, had pretty much declared that, thanks to Chavez’s policies and his role as a Latin oil sheik, Venezuela had become immune to economic “shocks.” Such shocks, Klein claimed, were routinely inflicted on socialist nations by free-market theorists such as Milton Friedman.

In Klein’s view, the Shock Doctrine — a neo-liberal capitalist horror concocted by Friedman — allowed Western neo-liberalist­s to seize upon national crises so as to impose privatizat­ions, social spending cuts and free markets. Klein quotes Friedman: “Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are then taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”

According to Klein, Chavez, by seizing oil revenues and redistribu­ting billions to cronies and the poor and to acquire votes, had insulated Venezuela from the perils of neo-liberalism. Along with compadres in other Latin American nations, Chavez had “made the continent less vulnerable to externally provoked crises and shocks.”

Except for one problem. Venezuela’s current economic shock is the direct product of the very policies that were supposed to protect the country from the shock doctrine. As Canadian leftist Linda McQuaig documents in her fawning portrayal of Chavez in her 2004 book It’s the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil, and the Fight for the Planet, Chavez fought hard to get OPEC to act as a powerful cartel to keep the price of oil high.

As McQuaig tells it, quoting an oil analyst, OPEC had become an ineffectua­l organizati­on, unable to maintain prices. Then along came Chavez, who flew to the Middle East in 2000 with an ambitious plan to impose discipline and maintain prices. He met with all the OPEC power leaders. In the end, the analyst says, Hugo Chavez “saved OPEC” — much to the delight of McQuaig, who saw rising oil prices as an attack on Washington and the Bush administra­tion.

As oil prices soared in coming years, Chavez had billions to squander, year after year. When he died in 2013, the price of oil was well above US$100 a barrel. What could go wrong? As Klein claimed, high oil prices and strongman socialism protected all against the next shock and another bout of neoliberal capitalist reforms.

The whole theoretica­l edifice was a sham, a fantasy of the media/Hollywood socialist left that propelled Venezuela into crisis and insolvency. As Friedman said of such a crisis, the actions Venezuela takes today will “depend on the ideas that are lying around.”

After 17 years of Chavez socialist oppression, there aren’t a lot of ideas on the ground in Venezuela at the moment. Maybe Trump and Rex Tillerson can help?

CANADA’S LEFT-WING CELEBRITIE­S ARE SUDDENLY SILENT ABOUT THEIR BELOVED SOCIALIST VENEZUELA.

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